


Adelphia and Aureole

by TheoMiller



Category: Doctor Who, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Doctor Who, Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M, hunters are like time lords, whoniverse - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 04:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheoMiller/pseuds/TheoMiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The familiar vworp, vworp of his brother’s beloved ship, the Impala, marks the beginning of something new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adelphia and Aureole

**Author's Note:**

> Adelphia, from the Greek αδέλφια, meaning "brotherhood".  
> Aureole, a halo bestowed upon martyrs.

Her name is Jessica, and her short human life is cut unnaturally short by Azazel, a particularly nasty Demon with milky yellow eyes. Sam finds an uninhabited planet and hides his ship there, calling Dean down. The familiar _vworp, vworp_ of his brother’s beloved ship, the Impala, marks the beginning of something new.

Sam’s surprised to find their Dad’s gone, but Hunters are pretty resilient, so he’s not concerned. At least until he finds out where John has gone – to track down Azazel. He’s tempted, several times, to go back to his ship and track their father himself, but his ship is not the last of the Hunters’ great machines, not like Dean’s. And Dean is her captain, consumed by wanderlust and a borderline martyr complex, so their trail is zigzagged across time and space. With extra emphasis on Earth and their outposts in the stretches of the galaxies later on, because Hunters clung to Earth – mostly late twentieth, early twenty first centuries by their reckoning – and developed a sort of fond, symbiotic relationship with humanity.

Sam likes Sarah, he really does, and so does Dean – but she has a life, dealing art across the galaxy in the twenty third century. She can’t go running off across time and space, especially when there’s still so much danger. Azazel’s out there, and he’s dangerous.

He tries to get Dean to bring Andy Gallagher, Cassie, Jo, Lisa, but he refuses. Sam knows _he_ ’s damaged, knew he’d never fill the hole Jess – his first companion – left in his two hearts, but Dean’s _never_ taken on a companion, and that worries Sam. Dean shouldn’t be alone.

It doesn’t take a Hunter to know Dean’s doomed the minute he makes a deal with that Demon bitch, who gives Sam just enough regeneration energy to save him after Jake. Dean refuses to let the Hellhounds tear apart his beloved Impala, so he waits for them on the shiny new oxygen rich Earth, modern atmosphere barely formed, with his sonic wrench in hand. When the dust settles, it leaves a battered sonic wrench and Sam, all alone with the Impala.

After that, Sam travels. Ruby, a Demon with a laser gun, joins him. It goes against every instinct in his bones to team up with a Demon, not after they destroyed his species’ home planet and left him with enough of their twisted DNA to make him a freak, but Ruby’s brisk and straightforward and not entirely unkind. He’s never heard of a Hunter with a Demon companion, but that doesn’t stop him.

And then Dean comes back.

No-one comes back from Hell. The planet is Time Locked. The Time Lock is old, though, and it has breaks, gaps – it’s been sealed since the First Great Time War, the rebellion that sent an Angel (an Archangel, no less) named Lucifer to an uninhabited planet. Lucifer was mad, but _brilliant_ , and he used humans (and other species, though he truly coveted the Angels and Hunters) to make his own race – the Demons. Either you consent and become a twisted creature, like Sam but even worse, crueler and more powerful than any of the other scum Sam and Dean hunted – more feral than werewolves, deadlier than vampires, and – or so they’d thought, until a famous sonic cannon made by Samuel Colt and Ruby’s laser gun proved otherwise – impossible to kill.

Sam was sure the Angels were extinct, but here he stands, with Dean in front of him claiming one brought him back, and Bobby backs him up. Says he’s met the Angel, seen him confound their usual identification methods, tested Dean and the Angel – Castiel – every way he knows how (and that’s a lot), and they check out.

Ruby doesn’t like Castiel, and it’s mutual. Sam’s a little in awe of the angel, who seems to hate him (almost) as much as he hates Ruby. Ruby is “Demon” and Sam is “Abomination”, and though once upon a time Sam knows Dean would’ve punched his lights out for that, now Sam’s pretty sure Dean agrees. This Dean is different – hardened, broken, and angry. He cares even less than he did before he was dragged to Hell, and that’s saying something, which absolutely terrifies Sam.

He should’ve, in hindsight, seen it coming: Ruby’s a Demon, and Demons always lie. Sam kills Lilith, and the Time Lock breaks down. Lucifer is free.

X-x-X-x-X

It’s the goddamn Apocalypse, and it’s all Sam’s fault. He stops feeling angry after a while, and through the guilt (people will die and it’s all his fault) he feels sorrow – it’s irrational for him to grieve Ruby, but he does. He thinks that maybe he’s grieving the person he wanted her to be. He thinks he understands why she did it, and that scares him more than anything. Maybe he is too far gone.

Castiel radiates guilt each (short) time he’s alone with Sam. It takes Sam a while, but Hunters aren’t renowned for their intelligence for nothing.

“You opened the panic room,” He says one day when Dean takes a break from their frantic research in the Library (the planet, that is – Sam _loves_ this place) to get them food, and Castiel flinches.

“I did,” The Angel replies, and sounds sincere when he adds, “I’m so sorry.”

Sam doesn’t have a right to be angry, so he’s not. “So Dean set the wheels turning when he almost turned into a Demon while on Hell, you set me loose while I was hyped up on Demon’s blood, and I broke down the last piece of the cage?”

“That is why it is our penance to set things right,” answers Castiel.

“Thanks,” Sam says. “Really, Castiel, I mean it. You saved him. A little too late, but you did save him. And now you’re facing the consequences of freeing me. You were just under orders – I get that.” He offers the Angel a placating smile.

“Cass,” the Angel corrects.

He thinks maybe he’s not “Abomination” anymore. That makes him happy.

Another thing that cheers Sam up is Dean barking at Cass to follow when they take off again, this time to stop the demons from burning New Earth down to so much ash floating in space. Cass is their companion. Well, no. Castiel may not hate Sam anymore, but it’s obvious to anyone that Cass is _Dean’s_ – his Angel, his companion. His first companion.

They lose Jo and Ellen to rogue Hellhounds on the planet Carthaginium, and Bobby loses function in his legs when his old Firefly class spaceship is invaded by Demons, but they successfully keep the Universe from being destroyed several times over, so at least their losses haven’t been entirely in vain. Sam’s worried, though. Dean is isolating himself in the wake of the tragedies, and Dean shouldn’t be alone.

A week before they run into the Trickster again, an old enemy hailing from the planet Asgard, Cass and Dean are closer than ever (and Sam’s _not_ jealous, he’s _not_ , because Cass isn’t here to replace him) and one day over kronkburgers (well-cooked, thankfully) and beef slush puppies, Sam watches yet another epic staring match between them and it hits him like a hypergiant to the chest – _Dean’s in love with Castiel_. Well, at least Sam can stop worrying about this whole ‘Cass is the new Winchester brother’ thing. Though, he supposes, if Dean and Cass ever got married—

Sam chokes on his slush puppy and represses that thought firmly.

X-x-X-x-X

Seven days later brings them to a planet Loki owns, one that uses illusions that delve deep within the victims’ minds.

Eight days brings them to a showdown with the Trickster, who’s apparently Gabriel, an Angel of the Archangel variety, who’s long since gone into hiding.

An hour after _that_ , and it’s clear they’re going to storm back to the Impala and leave Gabriel there, surrounded by a static shield. Sam’s tired of pride-filled rants and barbs flung through fiery orange, and he stops Dean in the middle of a rant about family.

“I’m not like Lucifer,” he says, “I’m like _you_.”

And this time, Gabriel listens. He listens as Sam talks about feeling trapped, more and more by the day, as his father and Dean travelled from planet to planet and galaxy to galaxy, flashing psychic paper and saving ungrateful strangers – he listens to Sam explain he knows how it feels to try and stamp on a brake, to slow down the inevitable destiny that looms inexorably before him, like a black hole (except Hunters invented black holes) – and he listens to Sam break down and beg, actually _beg_ , Gabriel to help. Because anything’s better than seeing the universe torn apart like Lawrence was, the beautiful orange planet with its seven suns. And won’t Gabriel please keep still more pain from being caused, keep other families from knowing how it feels to lose everything, to face the ultimate Pyrrhic victory?

Gabriel joins their cause.

A few weeks later, when Sam catch some much needed rest after running for his life (yet again), because unlike Dean he doesn’t actually enjoy that, Gabriel follows him into the room.

“Your brother and mine are oblivious bastards,” Gabriel tells him, while munching happily on a cupcake. “Edible ball bearing?” He offers one of the round, silvery sprinkles to Sam, and Sam wraps his lips around the Archangel’s fingers before he can think about it.

“Thanks,” He says awkwardly.

If he notices that Sam’s uncomfortable, Gabriel ignores it and flops onto the bed beside Sam. “So! Your brother, my brother, eye sexing in the console room.”

“Yeah, that’s been going on for a while. Hold on… Well, Dean came back from Hell two hundred years ago, almost, so… a hundred seventy years?”

“Almost as long as the First Great Time War,” Gabriel murmurs, then shakes his head. “I vote we find hunts on increasingly romantic planets, you feel me?”

Sam grins. When you bring on the Archangel Gabriel, you bring on the Trickster Loki too. “I like the way you think,” He says, and drags the scanner towards him.

It doesn’t work the way they planned it, which is pretty par for the course, but the end result is the same: a bunch of “evil sons of bitches” (as Dean so eloquently, and frequently, puts it) die, and Dean and Cass fall into each other’s arms with a resounding finality. When Cass saves Dean by (almost) sacrificing himself (again) while they’re in Renaissance era Venice, Dean single-handedly defeats about fifty vampires, the rage coursing through him making him not unlike the famed Norse berserkers, and kisses Castiel firmly. Sam thinks that, for once, maybe Dean isn’t even a little bit alone anymore.

“If we don’t stop this Apocalypse, they’re never going to get a proper chance,” Gabriel says to Sam when he politely turns away from Dean and Cass, who are being quite impolite in their frenzied snogging. “I want Castiel to have this.”

“You know what we have to do,” replies Sam (and if he slips his hand into Gabriel’s for support, well, Dean’s not paying enough attention to tease him).

X-x-X-x-X

Michael and Lucifer do not go easily into the Time Lock. In fact, there are several moments where Sam is sure they’ve lost and this is end. But into the Time Lock they go, and it’s in this way that two Angels and three  Hunters (because Bobby is not some ditchable prom date, and he’ll be damned if he’s missing the Apocalypse’s end battle) save the Universe for the first of many, many times.

And if Sam and Gabriel don’t kiss the moment it’s over, well, that’s because the whole “heat of the battle” thing is more Dean and Cass’s thing, and besides, Gabriel needed to grieve. Also, Bobby’s right there, and that’s like making out in front of John, which is gross, and Bobby would find a bucket of ice cold water to dump over them anyway. But they take a vacation (of sorts – there’s a thing with a rogue God of Time and an as of yet unidentified species of tentacle monster) on Space Florida, and it’s actually pretty romantic.

Castiel, grudgingly, informs Dean and Sam that he and Gabriel must return to their own planet to keep Raphael from causing too much trouble, but he points out a pretty redheaded human named Charlie and tells Dean he should take her with him while they’re gone.

Sam, who’s already got his eye on an Asian boy named Kevin for his next companion, draws Cass aside and asks him why he’s so concerned about Dean having a companion.

“Dean shouldn’t be alone,” Cass says simply, and Sam grins and straightens Castiel’s tie.

“I have something for you,” He says, handing Cass the little black leather flip-wallet. “It’s psychic paper. I reckon you’re one of us now.”

Not only does Cass’s entire face light up, Sam’s rewarded again when they’re back from a particularly grueling hunt (Kevin’s got the whole running thing down – he even zigzagged to make the werewolf’s extra weight a disadvantage – and Charlie’s a natural con artist) and Dean gets his first message from Cass on his psychic paper.

A hundred and forty seven years later, Sam and Dean meet Gabriel and Castiel in the Shadow Proclamation’s foyer and even before the _vworp, vworp_ of the Impala starting up is finished, Sam’s saying, “So get this…” and it’s off across all of time and space – saving people, hunting things, the family business.


End file.
